Jackson

A drama.

          The sweat on the sides of the bottle feels good against the cracks in my hands. Dry because of that soap we use at General Rudd’s Car Wash, the desert, and the drought. The night air feels good. I can see into the bedroom and Teresa is in bed with what I like to think is a smile. We were so excited to be alone again I’ve just remembered how beautiful she is. I’m not cold on the back porch but you’d think otherwise from the way she stole the covers. I can't talk to her, or anybody really, but neither can she. Afraid to say a word together.
          I peal the label of the bottle. If the year since we got Jackson is any indication eight to twelve weeks until the next time she doesn‘t feel like arguing against sex. We left the kid with her mom and rented out this house here in Palm Springs for the summer. I guess it’s unfair to leave her with the kid this long but we really needed to get away. I wasn’t ready to be a dad.
          That‘s why I convinced Teresa to get the abortion back in January of 2003 at two months. I was eighteen and she was twenty one. We moved our stuff into her mother’s apartment in Bakersfield and took off with nowhere in mind. Several months passed and our denial was enough to keep us going.
          Six months ago in January, me and Teresa were driving though the Utah ten miles outside of Salt Lake City. Snow had begun to fall when we found the kid wrapped in blankets laying on the side of the road. We brought him to a hospital where they said he was fine and he couldn’t have been left there very long but they had no records of him; neither did the other hospitals. They estimated he was six months old with a date of birth probably in early August.
          Teresa told me we had to take him home; it was a sign that we were meant to be parents. I thought it was a scared Mormon girl who didn’t want to be disowned by her parents but I kept it in. I agreed to out of the guilt for pushing her towards abortion. I wanted to name him Clark Kent Young, a perfect name for a phantom child. She liked my grandfather’s name Jackson.
          When the paper work was done we brought him home to Bakersfield and we moved into Teresa’s mom’s apartment complex. I took a job down the block at General Rudd’s Car Wash. I stopped making jokes and goofing around; meaning I stopped doing one of the things that drew Teresa to me. I started to hate every morning. I started to blame Jackson. I’m hating tomorrow morning because I need to go back to it all. I don’t want to go to sleep, I want this to last as long as it can.

          I’m standing on the back porch relishing the silence. No crying baby, no making my girlfriend cry; I can’t hear the car wash’s roar of water or the stereo blasting the Hispanic or oldies stations. I dream about burning that place down, taking Teresa and just drive away. We wont take Jackson. Why would we? If it wasn’t for that kid we wouldn’t have to go back at all. Teresa’s mom could use a man around the house anyways. She loves the kid. She wouldn’t mind.
          Teresa wakes up for a minute. Looks up at me and smiles weakly through the window and that’s it. I need this. On the ride home I’ll explain the plan to her. Drop her off at her mom’s to say goodbye for both of us. I’ll take all the money out of register at work. Knock over all the gas and oil cans and drop a match. Pick her up and we’ll drive away. Just away. We’ll go wherever the road will take us. Who will we be to argue with it? I can see us with big smiles on our faces with the asphalt racing under our car fast as Superman. I even make myself imagine Teresa’s mom with the kid; both smiling, both happy.
          I go back to the bedroom and crawl onto the bed and pull some of the covers back over me. I wake up Teresa when I pull her close. “How are you sweetie,” she asks. “Is something wrong?”
          “Not anymore,” I tell her, “not anymore.” 
          She rolls over and looks me in the eye. “Good,” she says. 
          I know it’s unlikely but Jackson has her eyes. Dark brown. She could easily be his mother. But I don’t see anything of me in the kid. I tell Teresa this. She wakes up pretty quickly. 
          “All I see in him is you,” I say.
          I’m about to tell her about the plan. But before I do she says, “That’s a relief.”
          She said she thought she saw nothing of either of us in Jackson yet; sometimes she just wanted to run away. 
          “But what monster would want to abandon a kid who’s already been abandoned.”
          I just pull her closer, she tells me my hands feel so dry. She doesn’t argue when I move her on top of me and kiss her as passionately as I can. We make love. It’s not great. It’s not bad. It’s just good. I want that to feel like enough. I really do.

          We wake up at eight in the morning when the telephone rings. Teresa gets it, and asks me when we should pack up and go home. The phone stops ringing and a minute later I hear her scream.
          “Zach,” she yells, “Jackson is missing.” She chokes when she says her mom walked in to check on him and he was gone.
          We pack up the car and drive home. The mile markers aren’t coming fast enough. The road is rushing under us unsafely fast but I find myself not caring, beating the car at every sign of traffic. Teresa is curled in the passengers seat. I’m rubbing her back and trying not to cry. The last thing she needs is me crying and freaking out. I am but she doesn’t need to be consoling me. I need to be strong. I’m not.
          We walk into Teresa’s mom’s apartment three and a half hours later and she’s crying and apologizing. She called the police and filed a report.

          “Gone,” she says. “All that‘s in his crib are his pajamas.”

          The police tell us that we shouldn’t worry, that they’ll try to find him, but if they don’t find him in four weeks the odds wont be in our favor.

 

                                                                                         ***

          After six weeks the cops tell us it doesn’t look good. Teresa doesn’t go to work or school anymore and General Rudd promoted me to Assistant Manager of General Rudd’s Car Wash, says it’s a form of “consolation.”

          On Saturday I’m working morning shift and the evening shift. As I’m walking out the door at about seven in the morning when I say Teresa hunched over the floor with a sponge in hand scrubbing the tiles.

          “I’ll be home at about one today but I have to be back down there by four.”

          “That’s fine Zach.”

          “Ok.”

          I can’t shake off the sight of her all morning. Her hair is frazzled and her nails are cracked. Last night she didn’t stop shaking her foot until she passed out. I wish it’s not a surprise when I walk through the door and she’s still scrubbing.

          “I’m back.”

          “Welcome back.”

          “Thank you.”

          She doesn’t look up.

          I sit down at the table in front of her, “Did I tell you I had a dream last night?”

          “No, you hadn’t. Haven’t. Tell me about your dream Zach.”

          “Well I haven’t had it since he went - can I just say for four weeks? It was of something that happened to me when I was ten. Me and Dad were taking our raft down the Colorado River with my mother driving down the road for when we got tired. Dad said he was worried by how fast and rough the water was starting to turn and steered the raft onto the beach. He flagged down my mother from the road and stepped out onto the beach. He started dragging the raft up when my mother pulled onto the beach too quickly, hitting my father on the a*s with the pick up’s bumper which caused him to push the raft I was in back into the water.” I hear the sound of her scrubbing stop but I don’t look up from the table.

          "Dad ignored Mom screaming at him and kept hollering at me. I was paddling against the current. ‘Zach, there’s a bridge down the road, ok? We’re going to drive down and pick you up down there. Ok son? We’re not leaving you. You’ll be able to see us on the road. Ok? Ok, when we start driving let yourself go on down.’

          My mother was cursing at him telling him to go in with me. He just jumped in the front seat and pulled off. I stopped fighting the current. As soon as he drove off the beach I couldn’t see him. I was getting soaking wet with the mix of river water, piss and tears. I was hitting rocks and both sides. I got a cut on my upper arm when I hit a rock going over the one and only fall that I still have the scar from. When I got to the aforementioned bridge there’s an empty space where my parents are supposed to be. That’s it, I think, I’m destined for a life on the river. But then, my father’s hairy knuckles on the back of my neck as he grabs my life vest.” I hope she thinks that name would me her smile so I look up only to see her staring at my nee caps. It scratches along the grain of my corduroys.

          “As my father got yelled at by my mother, I in the back seat, passing out, watching the raft float down stream, disappearing behind bush and bends. Well, when I woke up, in the dream not from it, we were in the parking lot of the Target and the raft was in the truck bed. Now that I think on it, it wasn’t the same one but I thought it was. Had nothing to do with the one before it.”

          I look up and she’s holding my hand from across sitting on the chair in front of me. I couldn’t recognize her hand, it felt so dry.

          “I feel so lonely,” she says.

          I try to pull her close but her back stiffens and she doesn’t move. I try not to hold it against her and try just massaging the shoulder my hand is on. She looks uncomfortable. So I slide my hand down her arm, feeling the hairs stand on end on my finger tips, and rest my palm on her hands. “I know,” I say. “I know.”

          She slips out of my reach and returns to the floor. Distracting herself. She’s getting better at cooking and the apartment looks like no one’s ever lived in it.
          Teresa has started vomiting every morning.

          Today at work she calls me from the hospital. She tells me she’s pregnant.
          She asks me if I still like Jackson, if I ever did.

          “I like Jackson.”

 

Reviews

[Kara Emily Krantz]

good news: this is a fantastic piece.

constructive criticism: edit the s**t out of it.

hahah. and i mean that in the best possible way. this piece has so much happening for it. but it's cluttered and it's messy and it doesn't always flow right and you need to print it out, doublespaced, and mark it all up with red or green or whatever color you wish.

"our denial was enough to keep us going. "

that was a great line. and it was gems like that that were sprinkled throughout the piece that really were impressive.

the story line is great. the twists - there's so many in such a short piece, and they are broken up well - with the story about the dream (which could use some clarification with quotations and such- make it more like he's telling her the story and not narrating it on paper - like with the word 'aforementioned' - it didn't fit- it wasn't natural speech"

wish i could be more particular, but you probably know what i mean by editing. it's a rough draft.

but i love it. and i hope i'm not coming across as harsh, because i really don't like stories that much... lol... i dont find many good ones here. but this could be really amazing. :) it's foundation already is.

hugs